I am pleased to announce that the first volume of our new ‘Heraldic Studies’ series has now been sent off to the printers and will be published just in time for Christmas! Under the title ‘Heraldic Artists and Painters in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times’, Laurent Hablot and I present a collection of fourteen English and French papers bringing together contributions from our Poitiers conference in 2014...

In recent years the concept of materiality has become more and more important in historical research. In going beyond the study of texts and images, scholarship now also addresses the materiality of their media, as well as the role physical objects may have played in different historical settings. This talk will explore the relationship between coats of arms and the concept of materiality. First, the talk will focus on...

My review on Thorsten Huthwelker’s study on the representation of rank in late medieaval coats of arms and armorials has been published yesterday on H-Soz-u-Kult, the central online information and communication platform for historians in the German-speaking area. In his study, Thorsten Huthwelker tries to answer the questions “In what way did coats of arms could reveal the rang of their bearer?” and “To what extent did medieval armorials...

The proposed paper tries to offer new perspectives on the turn from the Middle Ages to modern times by not focusing on given events, but by considering the imaginary and the way of thinking during these times. This does not mean to just emphasise the medieval roots of those events which are usually used to mark the turn of times and thus to show and judge medieval foundations of...

The biggest problem in dealing with heralds as well as with heraldry is the fact that both subjects are much too often seen as one. As a matter of fact, the relationship between heralds and heraldry is a tricky one and the link between both, as far as I see, has been largely overestimated. Heralds, on the one hand, are usually presented as THE experts and authorities in all...

At the 6th conference of the RCPPM, there will be a panel discussion on noble heraldry which I will attend as a panellist as well. The RCPPM (Charpentes et plafonds peints médiévaux) is an association dedicated to ceiling paintings and illustrated beams – a “lieu des images” which has been rediscovered as a source for historical and art-historical research only some 20 years before. The association wants to promote...

I think everyone dealing with medieval heraldry and heraldic sources is aware of the important mismatch between the number of articles and contributions dealing with medieval heraldry as such and the very poor role coats of arms and heraldic sources have played in the academic historical research so far.

Summary: The aim of this project is to reassess medieval heraldry from a historical perspective. Drawing on cultural history in its approach, it shall unlock the value of heraldic sources and make them available to medieval scholarship. Combining the analysis of images, artefacts and architecture with written sources, and drawing together history, art history and philology, the project addresses the central question of how these once arbitrary signs could...

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The collaborative blog Heraldica Nova is an initiative of the Dilthey-Project ‘Die Performanz der Wappen’ (University of Münster) which aims to study medieval and early modern heraldry from the perspective of cultural history. Read more ...